Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

'Who did you say you brought in here?' she asked. Better clear the whole thing up at the start. If it were a wife or a girlfriend, no point in getting interested.

'My mother,' he said, his face clouding. 'She's in Emergency. I'm to wait here.'

'Did she have an accident?'

'Sort of.' He didn't want to talk about it.

Fiona went back to Italian classes. Was it hard work? Where were they held?

'In Mountainview, the big school there.'

Fiona was amazed. 'Isn't that a coincidence! My best friend's father is a teacher there.' It seemed like a bond.

i

'It's a small world all right,' the boy said.

She felt she was boring him, and there were people waiting at the counter for tea and coffee. 'Thanks for helping me with the rubbish, that was very nice of you,' she said.

'You're very welcome.'

'I'm sure your mother will be fine, they're just terrific in Emergency.'

'I'm sure she will,' he said.

Fiona served the people and smiled at them all. Was she perhaps a very boring person? It wasn't something you would automatically know about yourself.

'Am I boring?' she asked Brigid that night.

'No, you're a scream. You should have your own television show.' Brigid was looking with no pleasure at a zip that had parted company with the skirt. 'They just don't make them properly, you know, I couldn't be so fat that this actually burst. That's impossible.'

'Of course it's impossible,' Fiona lied. Then she realised that Brigid was probably lying to her too. 'I am boring,' poor Fiona said, in a sudden moment of self-realisation.

'Fiona, you're thin, isn't that all anybody in the whole bloody world wants to be? Will you shut up about being boring, you were never boring until you started yammering on that you were.' Brigid had little patience with this complaint when faced with the incontrovertible evidence that she'd put on more weight.

'I met this fellow, and he started to yawn and go away from me two minutes after he met me.' Fiona looked very upset.

Brigid relented. 'Where did you meet him?'

'At work, his mother was in Emergency.'

'Well, for God's sake, his mother had been knocked down or whatever. What did you expect him to do, make party conversation with you? Cop yourself on, Fiona, really and truly.'

Fiona was only partly convinced. 'He's learning Italian up in your father's school.'

'Good. Thank God someone is, they were afraid they wouldn't get enough pupils for the class; he was like a weasel all the summer,' Brigid said.

'I blame my parents, of course. I couldn't be anything else but boring, they don't talk about anything. There are no subjects of discussion at home. What would I have to say after years of that?'

'Oh, will you shut up, Fiona, you're not boring, and nobody's parents have anything to say. Mine haven't had a conversation for years. Dad goes into his room after supper and stays there all night. I'm surprised he doesn't sleep there. Sits at his little desk, touches the books and the Italian plates and the pictures on the wall. In the sunny evenings he sits on the sofa in the window just looking ahead of him. How's that for dull?'

'What would I say if I ever saw him again?' Fiona asked.

'My father?'

'No, the fellow with the spiky hair.'

'God, I suppose you could ask him how his mother was. Do I have to go in and sit beside you as if you were a puppet saying speak now, nod now?'

'It mightn't be a bad idea… Does your father have an Italian dictionary?'

'He must have about twenty, why?'

'I want to look up the days of the week,' Fiona explained, as if it should have been obvious.

'I was up seeing the Dunne family tonight,' Fiona said at home.

'That's nice,' her mother said.

'Wouldn't want to see too much of them, not to appear to live in the house,' her father warned.

Fiona wondered what he could mean. She hadn't been there in weeks. If only her parents knew how often the Dunne girls claimed to be staying overnight in this house! Now that would really cause them problems.

'Would you say Brigid Dunne is pretty?' she asked.

'I don't know, it's hard to say,' her mother said.

Her father was reading his paper.

'But is it hard to say, suppose you saw her would you say that's a good looking girl?'

'I'd have to think about it,' said Fiona's mother.

That night in bed Fiona thought about it over and over.

How did Grania and Brigid Dunne get to be so confident and sure of things? They had the same kind of home, they went to the same school. Yet Grania was as brave as a lion. She had been having an affair with a man, an old, old man, for ages now. On off, on off, but it was the real thing. She was going to tell her father and mother about it, say that she was going to move in with him and even get married.

The really terrible thing was that he was Mr. Dunne's boss. And Mr. Dunne didn't like him. Grania didn't know whether she should pretend to begin the affair now so as to give her father time to get accustomed to it, or tell him the truth. The old man said people should be told the truth straight out, that they were often more courageous than you thought.

But Grania and Brigid had their doubts.

Brigid had her doubts, anyway. He was so terribly old. 'You'll be a widow in no time,' she had said.

'I'll be a rich widow, that's why we're getting married. I'll have his pension,' Grania had laughed.

'You'll want other fellows, you'll go off and be unfaithful to him and he'll come after you and find you in someone's bed and do a double slaying.' Brigid looked almost enthusiastic at the prospect.

'No, I never really wanted anyone before. When it happens you'll all know.' Grania looked unbearably smug about it.

Fiona and Brigid raised their eyes to heaven over it all. True love was a very exhausting and excluding thing to have to watch from the sideline. But Brigid wasn't always on the sidelines. She had plenty of offers.

Fiona lay in the dark and thought of the nice boy with the spiky hair who had smiled so warmly at her. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be the kind of girl who could get a boy like that to fancy her.

It was over a week before she saw him again.

'How's your mother? Fiona asked him.

'How did you know about her?' He seemed annoyed, and worried that she had made the enquiry. So much for Brigid's great suggestion.

'When you were here last week you helped me carry out the rubbish bag and you told me your mother was in Emergency.'

His face cleared. 'Yes, of course, I'm sorry. Well she's not great actually, she did it again.'

'Got knocked down?'

'No, took an overdose.'

'Oh, I'm very, very sorry.' She sounded very sincere.

'I know you are.'

There was a silence. Then she pointed to her tee shirt. ' Venerdì ,' she said proudly. 'Is that how you pronounce it?'

'Yes, it is.' He said it in a more Italian way and she repeated it.

'Are you learning Italian too then?' he asked with interest.

Fiona spoke without thinking, 'No, I just learned the days of the week in case I met you again,' she said. Her face got red and she wanted to die that moment, beside the coffee and tea machines.

'My name's Barry,' he said. 'Would you like to come to the pictures tonight?'

Barry and Fiona met in O'Connell Street and looked at the cinema queues.

'What would you like?' he asked.

'No, what would you like?'

'I don't mind, honestly.'

'Neither do I.' Did Fiona see a look of impatience crossing his face? 'Perhaps the one with the shortest queue,' she suggested.

'But that's Martial Arts,' he protested.

'That's fine,' she said foolishly.

'You like Martial Arts?' He was unbelieving.

'Do you like them?' she countered.